e
struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be
overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us--an illusion
which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with
some purely intellectual interest--when in reality we have stepped
forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the
manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means
nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is
attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast
upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home
to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what
is strange and uncommon--an innate and ineradicable tendency of human
nature--shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural
course of affairs which is so very tedious.

That this most perfect manifestation of the will to live, the human
organism, with the cunning and complex working of its machinery,
must fall to dust and yield up itself and all its strivings to
extinction--this is the naive way in which Nature, who is always so
true and sincere in what she says, proclaims the whole struggle of
this will as in its very essence barren and unprofitable. Were it of
any value in itself, anything unconditioned and absolute, it could not
thus end in mere nothing.

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in
particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of
mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn
from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say,
in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! It is like a drop of water
seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with _infusoria_; or
a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How we
laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another
in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human
life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an
indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of
Time and Space.

ON SUICIDE.

As far as I know, none but the votaries of monotheistic, that is to
say, Jewish religions, look upon suicide as a crime. This is all the
more striking, inasmuch as neither in the Old nor in the New Testament
is there to be found any prohibition or p